Stuck In Limbo
by Subject Matter
Summary: Peeta Mellark has been taken by the vile Capitol, and is forced to watch someone else control his actions. One-shot. For the Oneshot Challenge.


Stuck In Limbo

**A/N: Hello faithful readers! Here comes another one-shot made specially for Snev's One-Shot Challenge! Enjoy Peeta as he gets Hijacked!**

_I watched her go, the love of my life, walking away. Refusing my help, planning with that savage of a woman, Mason. I was busy studying the perimeter, watching for any straggling tributes we would have to kill. _

_Routine stuff, easy. The real meaning to burying myself in these tasks was simple. Actually quite obvious. I was distracting myself from the intense worry that plagued me since the beginning of the Games._

_I was too busy watching the world explode in a flurry of white flame to watch for the claws that descended from the sky, wrapping around my waste and yanking me up without a further ado. I was struggling in the UFO to release myself, wanting to get back to my Katniss. That's when they fed me the first sedative._

I'm restrained to this operating table, made of a gleaming surfaced marred by dried blood stains, whether mine or some other poor souls, I don't know. Multiple fluorescent bulbs were hanging above my head, making the interior of the room painstakingly clear. The white walls hurt my still sensitive eyes, and the mirror above me hinted that I was being watched. I tried not to look at my swollen face, one eye pinched closed, pussy and oozing.

_I wonder how many guards I took out in that struggle._ The thought waved in my mind as the last tendrils of a drugged sleep left my mind. I noted the contraption to my left, and, with fear, I wearily examine the tubes connected to my arm, steadied by a number of syringes no doubt plunged deep into the muscle and sinew of my arm.

I try to move, and only then do I notice the leather straps restraining my arms, legs, and neck. A wave of nausea hits me, and the secret claustrophobia that I had unwittingly developed in the last games was painfully obvious. I tried to move again, and the burning pain of a hot coal against cool skin was found where the needles buried themselves in my arm. I made sure not to strain that arm.

I took stock of my clothing, and I found a large portion of my mangled body covered by a pristinely white hospital gown that was nothing but forced on my sleeping body. The frayed bottom of the gown rested above my knee, if you could call it that. The combined plastic and metal prosthetic that had replaced my infection-riddled leg quivered, and I was sure it was deactivated, preventing an movement in my leg. I was trapped.

My breath was coming in short pants, irritating my sore throat and inflaming the lungs that felt as if they were stampeded upon by the chariots we rode in the beginning of the Games.

My thoughts were interrupted by the rush of a warm, thick liquid flowing throughout my body, straight to my brain. My thoughts became disjointed and cloudy as I fell into the open arms of drugged sleep.

Minutes, days, weeks could've gone by while I was under the foggy haze, no coherent thought penetrating the veil of fog. When my mind finally resurfaced, I found myself not in the dreary hospital scene, but the location of the first Games I had ever participated in.

I hoped it was just a dream, but, as an incredible wall of burning pain crashed down upon me, I knew exactly what they had done. I was locked in my own mind, where I would have to face whatever images they wanted me to.

When I felt a break in the agonizing painI struggled to find the rocky outcropping Katniss and I had originally sought refuge in a year ago.

The thought of my one and only love brought horrible thoughts and images to the forefront of my mind. Pain hit me in wave after wave of agonizing and seemingly endless torture.

I curled into a ball, my hands locked over my eyes as I tried to escape the horrid images of torture imprinting themselves on my memory. I was forced to go through hours, days of seeing katniss shoot an arrow through my heart, kissing _Gale _as she left cackling. Another image sought to be seen, and, for a _refreshing_ change of scenery, I got to watch her _stab_ and _slice_ my family, their mangled bodies writhing on the ground, entrails and organs spilling out. Katniss reached into the open cavity of my mother's chest and pulled out her heart, playing catch with Gale.

In my heart I knew Katniss would never do this to anyone, but the images became to much. My mental barriers shattered into millions of glittering pieces.

I cried. I screamed. I laughed. I tore my body to pieces inch by agonizing inch of flesh. When all of the images came to an abrupt halt, I screamed until my throat bled. And bled. Coughing up blood, I continued my bodily torture by raking at my eyes.

When the world fell into darkness, I kept up a silent chant in my mind. _Let me die, let me die, let me DIE!_

When I had given up all hope of erasing the horrible mental pictures from my mind, I found myself engulfed in the gray. Endless, vile, filthy gray. An image swam to my eyes, and I saw men, marching into the hospital room, undoing the straps trapping the body no longer mine to the table.

I could only watch as _someone else_ did everything I couldn't. He walked, he talked he _sounded_ like me, but only I could see what was really happening. I was locked out of my body, trapped in my mind, I was stuck. Stuck in limbo. To remain forever in this gray and vile place, watching something else control my body, my reactions everything about me I could no longer do.

I, Peeta Mellark, will never escape from limbo.

**A/N: There may be some errors, grammatical, spelling and others like them. I don't know if I accidentally switched between past and present tense, but excuse that as well. Happy reading!**


End file.
